I should preface this post by stating that I'm somewhat scientifically illiterate. But I don't want to be!! I have questions. Lots of questions. Maybe even stupid questions...But the kind of stupid questions that only smart people can answer. Well, that's where you come in:

Stupid question #1.

Let's say that I had a spaceship that was capable of speeds faster than the expansion of the universe. A quick Google search says it's 68km/s per megaparsec. And let's say that I…

The following is a 600-word essay which I wrote for Physics of life School at National Center for Biological Sciences-TIFR, Bangalore, India.

Biological cells, that all living organisms are made of, singly or collectively, are open dissipative machines, in a complicated assemblage of sub-machines in a hierarchical organization of soft matter, which is a perfect system showing emergent properties. They are ever-evolving, self-replicating machines that utilize energy…

Six thousand feet below our ship, three tectonic plates are colliding. Like slow-moving conveyor belts, the Rivera and Cocos Plates creep under the North American Plate. Where the denser oceanic plates…

Greetings from the Pacific Ocean! I am currently at sea for three weeks with an awesome team of astrobiologists, geochemists and molecular biologists. We are floating off the coast of western Mexico, about 100 miles west of Manzanillo, Mexico, on the Oregon State University research vessel Oceanus.

Off to sample the Eastern Tropical North Pacific Oxygen Minimum Zone on R/V Oceanus!…

Crew 172 is precious for me and will always be. Personally, after living 80 sols with an amazing team, coming back to the hab with a different team was a little challenging. They said they had been following our Mars160 mission but we all were strangers for each other. But I think we all went through the process well because we all had a single goal – a successful mission. We are the Mars Society Crew. I would say that I see an immense potential in…

When you are on Mars, life is unpredictable (just like on Earth, but on Mars, it’s a little bit more). I have always written about the beauty of this place; how those small portholes of our Martian cylindrical home let us gaze the surreal red backdrop and make us immerse into our own sense of awe and appreciation. How our home stands tall against all the oddities of Mars. Living in this place, sometimes you feel that you…

Mars 160 mission in the Utah Desert is towards its end. I think we have not just performed a Mars simulation, but lived a life; a life which was entirely different from what we had been living. It is a bonding that we have created with our hab and with each other. We became a family. We had our both funny and stressful moments like all families have, but I think somewhere, we all learned to be unconditional in our…

Yesterday morning, Jon, Annalea, Anastasiya and I headed for another adventurous EVA. This EVA was supposed to be in semi-simulation because the sampling site was 75 km away from our habitat and generally accessible to the public. We started gearing up at 10 am. The EVA team entered into the airlock at 10:30 am and started depressurization. Since we were supposed to travel ~75 km, we took PEV (Pressurised Exploration Vehicle) to get to the location. This…

On Earth, gypsum (CaSO4.2H2O) is deposited via evaporation of calcium and sulfate-rich water. Gypsum is fragile, mostly translucent and occurs as thick, sedimentary evaporite beds. It is fairly common mineral on Earth and can be found around the salt lakes, hot springs, and veins of sulfate solution. Since it is relatively easily dissolved in the water gypsum is rarely found at the surface except in deserts. In hydrothermal systems, gypsum can…

Today, Annalea, Anastasiya and I headed towards the field site at 9:17 in the morning. After gearing up, we went inside the EVA airlock, simulated depressurisation and egressed the hab. Our first task was to remove the two trash bags from the hab. This EVA was basically focused on collecting hypolith abundance data and taking the sample back for macroscopic measurements of hypolith colonies. The first lesson learned…

We are performing Mars simulation in the Utah Desert and doing rigorous science on field during EVAs. However, sometimes your approaches are constrained in the heavy spacesuit and in absence of highly specialized equipment. That’s what I learned while conducting science operations in this simulation. A proper sample collection regime in sterilized conditions is the first and the most significant step before those samples are processed in the laboratory.…

It is Sol 20, and after many strenuous extra-vehicular activities performed by the MARS 160 crew at MDRS, it is worth documenting and acknowledging how many hours the crew spent performing rigorous science and engineering activities. Our Executive Officer Yusuke Murakami did this exemplary job by generating this data for individual crew members. So, in totality, the entire crew spent 152 hours outside the “Martian” vehicle under the scorching…

Here I am with some selected pieces from my diaries written over a period of three months as part of MARS 160 Twin Desert-Arctic Analog Mission and Crew 172. Mars 160 mission recently culminated its first phase at Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the Utah Desert. The second and final phase of this Mars simulation mission will take place at Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in the High Arctic this summer. Both FMARS and MDRS, founded and…